


Boyfriend/Dog Combo

by anticupid16



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, M/M, Online Dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 21:31:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4364927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticupid16/pseuds/anticupid16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura sets up a dating profile for Derek and includes the fact that he's both a boyfriend and a dog in one</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boyfriend/Dog Combo

Laura was acting suspicious and Derek was determined to figure out why. For the last sixth months he’d been living in her spare bedroom while he worked on finding a better job than the one he had at the library (he hated the Dewey Decimal system). For the last month, he’d caught Laura sneakily taking photos of him while he did various things around the house like reading and cooking. She’d asked him weird questions like his favorite movie, how did he feel about knitting, had he ever read anything by Jane Austen, et cetera. 

So, while he had a blessed day off, he decided to snoop through their apartment. Specifically, through the desk in the corner of the living room that Laura used as her office. Derek sat down in the comfy rolling chair and started in the first drawer, finding only receipts and tax documents. The second drawer consisted of loose papers and files regarding her work—she was interning at a law office for werewolves while she went to law school—that he felt awkward leafing through, so he quickly moved on to the final drawer. 

It was mostly spare office supplies like legal pads, but at the bottom was a plain black lined notebook with worn corners. Extracting it from the bottom of the pile Derek flipped it open to find that it was a weird insight into Laura’s life. There were recipes every few pages, some even stained with food. In other places there were phone numbers and addresses busily scrawled slantways across the page. Finally, Derek found a page with his name written across the top in big blocky letters. And there were all the answers to the questions he’d been asked. There was also a website title scrawled in the margin. 

Nervous, Derek turned on the computer that he and Laura had been sharing—more like Laura used it for legitimate work and Derek used it to order stuff from Amazon—and immediately opened up the browser. When he began to type in the website’s title, it popped up with a little star next to it indicating it was bookmarked. “Dear god,” he whispered as he pulled up the page. It was a werewolf friendly dating website. A werewolf. Friendly. Dating. Site. 

“Laura Elizabeth Hale,” Derek growled, hoping that across town sitting through a deposition or whatever it was that lawyers did, Laura’s nose had started itching. He was lucky: the username and password she’d chosen for him (sourwolf7 and a string of numbers and letters that didn’t appear to be related) were also scrawled in the margin of the notebook and Derek angrily punched them in, hoping fervently that this was a joke. 

The profile opened up immediately, along with a series of notifications. He had seven unread messages, a photo he’d posted had three new likes, and there was a comment on his page, which he could see was from someone named knaughtywolf119 letting him know that he was sexy as hell in much cruder terms. Other than that, it looked like all Laura had done so far was upload a few photos and answer the profile questions. He flipped through them and saw that she’d put his answers verbatim, and the pictures weren’t too bad. In one he was cooking eggs in just his pajama pants, his bare back visible (that was the one with the most likes), but the other two were tame. Him sitting at the kitchen bar with a cup of coffee and the newspaper, and him reading a paperback on the couch. 

Then he caught sight of the biography section of the profile, where Laura had jumped from sneaky to embarrassing. She had written, no joke: “As a werewolf, if you can’t afford both a boyfriend and a pet dog, I can act as both! Cuddles by day, kisses by night!” Derek rubbed his forehead, trying to pretend that he’d imagined reading that, but when he looked up again, sure enough, it was still there. 

The computer let out a little ping sound, and he turned his attention to the bottom corner of the browser where he was alerted that he had a new incoming message. Irritated, Derek clicked on the message icon and looked over the messages waiting for him—or for Laura. Most of them were greetings with a variety of emoticons to indicate that ‘hello’ really meant ‘I’d suck you off please talk to me.’ But the newest message looked at least promising. 

“Hey Sour Wolf, names Stiles. I lived in Beacon Hills too, thought that was a funny coincidence.” Not only did this Stiles use grammar rules, but he also had apparently gone beyond looking through Derek’s photos and actually read all of the info that Laura had meticulously filled out for him. Such as his hometown. 

“You there?” the next message read, popping up right in front of him. It was then that Derek realized he must be visibly online, so this Stiles knew he was reading his messages. After a moment of debating whether he should just delete the account now and pretend this had never happened, Derek finally decided to respond, and then check out this kid’s profile. He sent a generic greeting, then clicked the little icon in the corner of the chat screen that led him to Stiles’ profile. His username was SarcasmAndFries, which was hardly clever, but he appeared to have answered all his bio questions as well, so Derek scrolled through those before adventuring into his photo album. 

Stiles liked to read mythology and Neil Gaiman. He was human, from Beacon Hills, finishing his last year of college in San Francisco. He acknowledged that he couldn’t cook for shit, but that he was a wicked bartender to make up for it. He worked part time at a bar, in fact, to help pay for his apartment rent. This sounded pretty standard, like a college student trying to keep his head above water. He was only a couple of years younger than Derek, so Derek bit the bullet and pulled open the pictures. 

There were a series of selfies featuring a pale boy with a series of moles, brown cow eyes, and gelled up brown hair. He looked sweet enough, even when he wore a tattered red hoodie and backwards cap in matching red. Some of the photos included another boy and a girl, who seemed to be together from the third wheel nature of the photos. And the pouts. Which were really cute and besides the point. 

He was being asked now by Stiles if his favorite book really was American Gods, and if so, was it because he related to Shadow because he looked like he might relate well to Shadow. 

Two hours later, Laura came home from work to find Derek still chatting with Stiles on the dating website. “You know, I would be mad that you snooped through my stuff to find out about this, but I think my plan has succeeded too well to be upset,” she said, smirking as Derek looked over his shoulder to glare at her. 

“Why did you set up a profile for me on a dating website?” 

“Because I thought I’d convince you to give it a shot and already have a series of cute guys for you to chat with lined up. I hadn’t gotten that far, but it looks like you’re doing pretty well for yourself.” 

She leaned over him, taking control of the mouse and clicking around until she reached Stiles’ profile to look at a picture of him. “He’s cute,” she said, grinning and hugging Derek. “Have fun.” 

“Laura, nothing is coming of this. We’re just messaging.” 

“Mmhmm, first you’re just messaging, then you’re just dating, next you’ll be just married!” Derek rolled his eyes, but he knew when his sister was determined to have the last word and right then was one of those times. After all, the entire conversation unfurling on the computer screen was decidedly more a debate over whether Good Omens was better than American Gods or if they were two completely different creatures altogether. It was hardly dating material. 

It took a week before Stiles asked about the “boyfriend and dog in one” package and who came up with that. Apparently it just didn’t sound like something Derek would actually put on his profile, which was accurate. So Derek explained that he hadn’t actually made the profile, that it was his sister’s idea. Stiles got a kick out of that, saying that he’d probably get along with Laura really well. Derek thought so, too. 

After two weeks of messaging on a nightly basis, about topics from Derek’s job to Stiles’, from Derek’s major in education that hadn’t yet landed him a job to Stiles’ fears that becoming an architect would never work out, and all the way around to the fact that they probably lived relatively close to each other. Then Stiles asked Derek if he’d like to Skype chat. Apparently he needed to be working on some homework, and it would be easier if he wasn’t constantly typing out responses to Derek. 

Laura wasn’t home, she was working double time on a heavy case going to court that weekend. If there was ever a time to Skype with Stiles, it was then. So he quickly checked in the bathroom that there were no stains on his t-shirt and that his hair actually looked combed. 

Stiles didn’t have a very good quality camera, so the image was grainy and a little delayed. He’d grown his hair longer since his last photo, but instead of gelling it up it was tucked underneath a beanie. “I’m getting that cuddle vibe now,” he said, and Derek couldn’t help but grin at the sound of Stiles’ voice. It was sarcastic, of course, but it was also fun and exactly how Derek had imagined it would be. 

“Again: I didn’t write that part, that one was all Laura.” 

“And I think Laura sounds like a firecracker and I’d love to meet her.” 

“Did you just describe my sister as a firecracker?” Stiles stuck out his tongue and waved his hand around, a gesture that Derek had a feeling he’d be seeing a lot more of. 

“I’m sure I’m not the first person to do so,” he responded. Stiles looked like he was trying to concentrate on the homework he’d mentioned so Derek pulled a paperback off the desk and started to read, their Skype call falling into comfortable silence. It was the first of several similar Skype sessions in which they chatted in between doing whatever they needed to (mostly Stiles had homework, but occasionally Derek had something to work on for the library). 

Laura started calling Stiles his boyfriend in conversation, but since she never did it in front of anybody else, Derek was okay with it. He’d never win the argument anyways so he let her tease him, though he didn’t mention it to Stiles during their Skype calls, online messages, and text messages (they’d exchanged numbers right after their second Skype call). He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Stiles had started dropping hints that he’d like to meet Derek for real, usually hints that involved teasing him about the cuddly boyfriend/dog package that he hadn’t let go of yet. 

“Why don’t you want to meet him?” Laura had practically screeched when Derek mentioned over dinner one night his misgivings. 

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem like something that really happens you know?” 

“Derek, it’s a dating site. The point is to meet people online, get to know them, and then meet them for a real date. You and Stiles have been talking every day for over a month now, you’re basically already in a relationship. You know he goes to school only a few streets away. He’s got to live nearby.” 

“It just… What if it feels too real?” 

“Too real? What is this a fake relationship where you lie to everybody?” 

“No, of course not.” Laura talked him into agreeing to meet Stiles in only ten more minutes. She’d be a great lawyer one day. 

They agreed to meet at Nino’s, a little Italian place squished in between a tattoo parlor and a vape shop that had the best cannolis that Derek had had so far (he hadn’t had many though). It wasn’t a dressy restaurant so Derek was wearing the leather jacket that he liked to wear around town to give off the illusion that he was tougher than he looked. It generally did the trick, but when Stiles walked through the front door of the tiny restaurant, immediately spotting Derek in one of the five booths in the place, he grinned. 

“Sour Wolf with a leather jacket? Seems pretty cliché,” he said, slipping into the booth. He’d trimmed his hair apparently, but not foregone the red hoodie. Derek liked it even more in person than on Skype and SnapChat. 

“It’s my favorite jacket, and it looks a right side better than your red riding hood.” 

“Is that supposed to be a big bad wolf reference?” 

Laura had made herself scarce for the night, winking at Derek when she left before he needed to and informing him of exactly what time she intended to be home the next day. Derek was surprisingly grateful for that fact when the date ended and he wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet. Stiles had walked, as had he, so they took a nice stroll around the corner with their cannolis, continuing their debate about whether the Hobbit should have been split into three movies or not as they slowing approached Derek’s apartment. He invited Stiles in. 

And four hours later, curled up in Derek’s bed watching Netflix under the covers Stiles grinned up at Derek and said, “Your sister was right, you are both dog and boyfriend in one for the cuddling.”


End file.
